


207. midnight hitchhiking

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [107]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hitchhiking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 12:32:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8285975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: She’s about Helena’s age, and she’s shaking from the cold no matter how close she holds her hands to the heater-vent of Helena’s secondhand truck. She has brown hair. She’s wearing tights underneath her shorts and they’re laddered all up and down the sides and she’s cold and her hair is a mess and she is about Helena’s age. She could kill Helena and take everything she owns, but for all Helena knows she’s thinking the same about Helena. That’s the problem with picking up hitchhikers. It’s a gamble.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: reference to abuse]

She’s about Helena’s age, and she’s shaking from the cold no matter how close she holds her hands to the heater-vent of Helena’s secondhand truck. She has brown hair. She’s wearing tights underneath her shorts and they’re laddered all up and down the sides and she’s cold and her hair is a mess and she is about Helena’s age. She could kill Helena and take everything she owns, but for all Helena knows she’s thinking the same about Helena. That’s the problem with picking up hitchhikers. It’s a gamble.

“Where are you going,” Helena says.

“Wherever you’re headed,” says—

“Do you have a name,” Helena says.

There’s a thoughtful pause. “Sarah,” says the woman in the passenger seat.

—says Sarah, then. Okay.

“Okay,” Helena says. “I am going to Sioux Falls, to return this truck.”

“Not your truck,” says Sarah. There is no question mark. She’s looking out the window. The washed-out lights they pass in the 3am dark keep almost but not quite lighting up a bruise on the side of her face. Helena doesn’t look at it. When there is a bruise on your face, you never want people to ask about it. You want it to – not be there. Helena wants to say _I know_ , but that would mean pointing it out and so she won’t.

“No,” Helena says. “I borrowed it. I do not tow.”

Sarah makes a sort of conversational _ehn_ noise. There’s a scuffle and then she curls up into the passenger’s seat, feet propped on the edge, knees folded to her chest. She is very small. Helena wants to feed her soup and let her sleep on Helena’s couch. This woman could kill Helena and take everything she owns. Helena reaches over and turns up the heat.

“Are you hungry,” she says.

“No,” says Sarah, which sounds like a lie. Helena hums but doesn’t call her out on it.

“I’m hungry,” she says. “I am going to stop. If that is okay.”

Sarah’s foot is bouncing against the seat impatiently, but she just makes a vague movement with her shoulders and doesn’t answer. Helena pulls off the highway, finds a fast-food restaurant plastered with posters of food whose colors are so bright they seem unreal in the early-early-early morning dark. Helena almost can’t look at the burgers, the pancakes, the NEW! specials. But she does.

The truck ticks to itself quietly as it cools down. Helena digs through her pocket until she finds coins and bills and then hops out of the truck. “You can stay inside, if you want,” she says. Her breath plumes out of her mouth.

Sarah doesn’t say anything, just gets out of the truck. She tugs her leather jacket tighter around herself and darts towards the restaurant like the cold is going to eat her alive. It feels like it might. The only light is from a streetlight on the corner, and that light is flickering, and nothing quite seems real. It is the sort of cold that might eat you right up. Helena follows her in.

There’s a bored-looking teenager slumped over the cash register, all frizzy hair and eyes that go right to Sarah’s bruise and stick there. Sarah just folds herself up tighter, and Helena walks right up and orders two burgers and three orders of French fries and a milkshake – chocolate – and turns around and says: “Do you want anything?”

There’s a moment where Sarah just stares at her and then she laughs, the sound rough and unbelieving. _You’re going to eat all that yourself?_ but she doesn’t say it, just says: “Tea.”

Helena pays. The two of them stand next to each other in awkward silence while their food is put together with half-asleep numbness. Helena looks at the toys you can get for children. There’s a bright red airplane. She wants it.

They sit down. Helena dumps half of the container of fries into her mouth, but the woman across from her doesn’t drink her tea; she just pops the lid off it, lets it billow steam.

“You know I don’t owe you shit,” she says. “Just ‘cause you bought me tea.” Her voice is wary, shoulders hunched; she looks like a coyote, maybe, something starved and feral.

“I know,” Helena says. “I don’t like owing. Very messy. No fun.” She picks up a burger. Can she eat the burger in one bite? Probably not. Best to try for two.

There’s silence from the other end of the table, but Helena doesn’t look up. She thinks that’s what you’re supposed to do. She never liked it when people stared at her, back when she was afraid.

“’t’s not even good tea,” Sarah mutters. “Lipton shite. Not worth whatever you paid for it.” She’s drinking it anyways, hands clinging to the cup like it’s the only thing that can save her. Helena thinks about the curve of her fingers towards the heating vent. With her own fingers she rips a napkin into pieces, just to have something to do.

“Put sugar in it,” she says, trying to be helpful.

“Just makes it worse.”

Helena nods, accepting this as truth. She doesn’t understand why you would drink tea when there is hot chocolate and soda and milkshakes, but at least now she knows.

“Helena,” says Sarah.

“Mm?”

“Thanks for the tea.”

“Of course,” Helena says, and keeps eating. She doesn’t look up. Just in case looking up will make Sarah vanish.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [422\. runaway](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8393083) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09)




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